Stay With Me
by Lindt Luirae
Summary: Falling for her doesn't leave him with bruises and broken bones, it leaves him with warmth and the colour green and the rapidly addicting revelation that it might all just be alright after all. KakaSaku Proposal AU.


**A/N:** Hey guys, I finally finished one of the one-shots I'm working on. I'm sorry for disappearing, I'm working on a lot of things right now though, so hopefully, I'll be posting again soon! You can expect an angsty KakaSaku piece soon enough (don't worry it's a happy ending!) and an update for UTU on November 29th. I want to also note that I have chapters ready for Wish I Knew You but I'm not posting them yet. The good news is, when I do, they will be quick updates! Without any further ado, enjoy this tooth-rotting fluff!

**Beta'd by the awesome Kakashisgf ~**

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"You seem a little off lately," Genma remarks one day, leaning against the reception counter of the Hokage tower next to Kakashi.

Kakashi straightens, a little too abruptly to be casual. "I'm fine."

Knowing how easily spooked Kakashi can be when it comes to talking about feelings, Genma quickly countered, "I'm not saying you aren't! I'm just saying, you know, if you ever want a listening ear or whatever, I'm here, okay?"

Kakashi's eyes crease faintly as his hands slip into his pockets and prepares to depart. "I know. Thanks."

He turns on his heel and stalks away, his fingers tracing over the warm metal resting against his thigh. He presses the tip of his finger against the small diamond, slips his pinkie into the ring, where he can feel the delicate engravings of a date.

Twentieth of May, the year Sakura became the medical director of the hospital, the day they went on their first date four years ago.

It's steady with her.

It's all-consuming (a little like drowning) too. Like falling from a skyscraper, your synapses firing, your heart racing, but it's a soft mattress that meets you at the bottom and not concrete floor.

Falling for her doesn't leave him with bruises and broken bones, it leaves him with warmth and the colour green and the rapidly addicting revelation that it might all just be alright after all.

He loves her. He didn't think he would ever be capable of loving, but he loves her in all the stupid ways his heart knows how to lose rhythm at the sight of her, in all the absurd ways his stomach knots at the feeling of her touch, in all the ridiculous fantasies that spin unrestricted and uncontrollable in his brain.

He traces the ring again, wonders, just wonders, what it'd be like to live the rest of his life with her. Coming home every night to her smiling face, sleeping beside her as she chases all the nightmares away, reading together on the couch, bathing his dogs, and laughing and laughing and laughing, because they are happy, and he loves her, and it's the best thing that's ever happened in his sorry, miserable excuse of a life.

His feet carry him home. He could ask her—he could even ask Ino to ask her. They'd never talked about marriage—had only once briefly mentioned kids, and the memory of her blush as she admitted she'd like them one day, leaves a burning feeling in his chest that makes it hard to breathe.

The ring is hot against his skin now, sucking his body heat. It was his mother's, and his grandmother's before her. It's the only piece of her he has left—his father had entrusted it in his will for Kakashi, if he decided to one day carry on the Hatake legacy.

Kakashi had it modified with the engraving and a diamond. He doesn't know what his father would've thought of that, but he likes to think he wouldn't have minded.

He stops at the doorstep and wonders if he should do it today. He could just ask.

It's steady with her, gradual. It builds him up until he feels whole; she meets him in the middle; picks him up from the bottom. She's the one thing he can count on.

He listens to her footsteps as she moves around the house they have shared for the past two years, imagines the way she twirls sometimes to the music in her head, and smiles to himself.

Kakashi twists the handle and walks in. Sakura stops in the hallway, a pillow in her hands. "Oh— hi! You're back early."

Kakashi shrugs helplessly as he shuts the door and moves to press a kiss to her temple. "I'm not Hokage anymore. I have a lot more free time than I expected."

Sakura chuckles. "Thank god for that! Come on ... I was just about to start rereading _Icha Icha Violence_. Wanna read with me?"

Kakashi smiles, takes a moment to really feel the familiar fluttering in his chest that only she can cause before following her to their bedroom. Sakura climbs into bed, snuggles under the covers before she beckons him over. "Come on, join me."

"Just give me a moment to change," he says and doesn't try to hide his smile because she's watching him intently as he begins to strip, and it never gets old having her look at him, all of him, but finding her eyes straying to his face instead and staring.

She'd called him beautiful once, which isn't a word Kakashi would ever associate with himself, but it still makes his chest feel all kinds of tight and achy, because she looks at him like he's hung the stars in the sky. And sometimes it's overwhelming, and sometimes it's unravelling, and just sometimes, it's what makes meeting the gaze of his reflection easier.

"Hey," he greets her with a kiss on the lips when he slips next to her under the silk sheets.

"Hey," she hums, tilts her chin up to mould their lips together. He kisses her again, because she tastes like her strawberry chapstick, and it's a taste he's addicted to. "How was work?"

"Mind-numbing," he tells her honestly. "What about you?"

"Hectic," she responds with a little pout as she draws away from him to retrieve _Icha Icha_ off the nightstand. "But now I'm home, so I'm going to read trashy romance novels with my charming boyfriend."

Kakashi laughs; he can't help it.

He's had that ring with him for three weeks and can't believe he held onto it that long—every day it gets a little harder not to ask.

Sakura snuggles back against him, head on his shoulder, and flips to the first page. They read quietly for a while, her little giggles a familiar comfort in the darkness broken by the bedside lamp. Kakashi only half pays attention to the text, his nose pressed against her floral-scented hair, cheek against her head.

He wraps both arms around her middle and smiles when she burrows into him, her hand moving to rest on his arm. Her fingers caress the scarred skin, drawing small mindless circles that tickle. Eventually, she lowers the book, head leaning back against him. "You alright?"

"Mhm." His lips press lightly to her hair. "Why?"

She cranes her neck back to regard him silently with her endless green eyes, and with her gaze comes a feeling a little like drowning, "You've just seemed ... a little off lately. You know you can talk to me about anything, right? What's on your mind?"

Kakashi considers that for a few moments—it's such a convenient opening. He bites his lip as he looks down at her, watches the way her eyes flicker down to his mouth before quickly flitting back up. "... I love being a ninja," he admits quietly. "Or, well, I got used to being a ninja. But ... you make me want to stay here with you."

She smiles, and it's radiant. "Yeah? That doesn't sound so bad."

"No," he murmurs, pressing his forehead against her head. "I'm saying—I'm telling you—you make me want to stay here, with you—you make me want to never go anywhere again."

"... then stay." The back of her fingers come up to brush over his bare cheek, and the way his heart stumbles at that is a little embarrassing.

"Do you want that? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me?" he hazards uncertainly and leans back to allow her to look at him again.

"I thought that was fairly obvious," she mutters shyly, and cups his cheek in her palm. "Why?"

Kakashi drummed his fingers on her hip; it is now or never, her eyes poring into his own, his heartbeat hammering against her back. "Sakura would you ... would you like to ... would you marry me?"

Her lips part in surprise, her green eyes widening. And then her face spreads into the prettiest smile he's ever seen, "Oh my god, yes!"

Kakashi laughs at the sudden way she spins in his lap as she climbs over him to kiss him. "Of course I'll marry you ... I've been wondering if you'd ever ask," she laughs happily against his mouth, and Kakashi kisses her again and again, relishing in the taste of her and the anxious, happy feeling in his chest and the way his cells ache with longing and want.

His arms snake around her petite frame, cradle her against him as their lips mesh together with something gentler and savouring. He'll savour her until his last breath, he thinks, he'll take all she gives, and he'll hold it close to the heart she healed, and it will be okay because she is the only good thing he can count on.

His hands sink under her clothes, across the hot skin of her back and the familiar dips and valleys of her body. They caress and brush and linger until they pull the sounds from her lips like a fish to a hook.

It doesn't feel like the first time; it doesn't need to be a first to be special. It's more like coming home after a long mission.

There's comfort in the strong thud of her heart against his, a languorous abandon in the smooth feeling of her skin under his touch. He finds escape in the whisper of her voice and the gasping little noises she makes that still make him feel like she's sinking her hand elbow deep into his being and carving a space for herself.

Watching his hands reveal patches of her skin fills him with restless greediness that makes him tug and tug and tug until she's gloriously bared to him, flushed skin and heaving breasts and perky pink nipples that strain under his attention. He follows the lines of her body with his fingers and with his mouth and again with his tongue, her stomach fluttering under every touch and his fingers almost trembling with the need to have her.

And when he buries himself inside her, it feels like he's sinking a piece of his soul into the depths of her, and for a moment they're suspended and unmoving and barely breathing and her mouth is parted wide and her eyes are glassy and half-lidded.

There are so many things he wants to say, so many things he feels in that moment, a world of emotions he keeps locked at bay all the time, but that she can manage to rock to the core so that they all threaten to come tumbling out in a mess.

He kisses her and it tastes like awe and serenity because at that moment he's as close to her as he could ever be. He kisses her again because his heart is clenched as tight as she is around him and he needs to channel all the vivid feelings in his chest somewhere before they overwhelm him.

It propels his body to undulate against hers, such a familiar dance, the steps rehearsed and performed a hundred times but the high like nothing else.

Moving with her melts the world away into a background hush, and all there is to feel is slick skin and the heated air and way she parts for him like she's moulded to encase him.

"Kakashi," there are ten fingers imprinting their touch into the skin of his back, and she's so sodden he's all consumed in her to the last inch it feels like he's drowning, "yes, yes, _yes_..."

She's so perfect for him, warm and loving and wet, easily matching each of his thrusts, faster and faster, bringing them closer together each time.

The smell of her is overwhelming—the lavender in her hair and the vanilla of her skin and the musky feminine scent of her arousal and that sweet chapstick coating her lips ... his lips part and his tongue trails a hot line up the column of her neck, where his teeth then sink to mark her as his.

And then he covers her open mouth with his, and feels her moan in his throat, and then her orgasm on his cock.

"Oh god," he chokes on a groan, jerks his hips hard into her as he comes too, brought over the edges by the full-body shudders that transfer from her frame to his. "Fuck," he grunts brokenly, and suddenly her arms are around him and she's burying his face in her neck.

"Shhh," she gasps, still grinding against him, milking their highs for all their worth.

He grabs her hips and bites at the juncture her shoulder because she's still quivering around him and everything feels so sensitive and raw, the sound in his throat a little like a plea for mercy.

She slides off him but his arms cage her against him, refusing to part with her yet. He presses her as close as he dares and delights in the breathy chuckle he feels on his temple.

He lets her slide down his front until they're face to face, and nose to nose. She smiles, tentative and summery, "Let's go tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" He blinks, heart stumbling in his chest and head still cloudy with post-coital bliss.

"Not the wedding just— let's do it tomorrow. Let's get married tomorrow—hell, let's do it now."

Kakashi lets out a startled laugh, "I don't think the courthouse is even open at this hour."

Sakura pouts which earns her a kiss on the lips and a chuckle. "Tomorrow," he agrees, lovingly brushing hair out of her eyes.

He fumbles blindly over the mattress as they kiss sweetly again, snags the hem of his sweats, and fishes in the pocket, producing a ring.

Sakura's eyes glint as she looks at the silver metal in Kakashi's thumb and index. "It's so pretty …" she offers him her hand, cheeks popping endearingly.

Kakashi slides the ring on her finger, feeling strangely ecstatic. "It was my mother's."

"It's gorgeous," she reaffirms, looks at it again and squeals before pulling him into another hug, "I love it, I love it, I love it!"

"I love you," he tells her in response, which earns him a grin, her teeth sinking into the soft of her lips. He doesn't think he'll ever utter truer words.

And the best part? It still makes his stomach twist when she presses her forehead against his and replies, softly and with feeling: "I love you, too."

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